


A study of opposites and home

by dollylux



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 00:13:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1798444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux





	A study of opposites and home

They had been born into incompatibility, blisteringly opposite and a fascinating study for any masochist. Sergio is everything Fernando isn't, and Fernando couldn't care less. It's even more obvious now to Sergio that Fernando is no longer Spanish (at least seemingly, or maybe no longer wishes to be, no matter how much he loves his national team). The two battles between Real Madrid and Liverpool had left Sergio wounded, had taken him days to recover, if he had in fact recovered yet at all. The line between them became a bloody gash.

But that's the problem with white: every crease can be seen, every imperfection. You learn grace the hard way, you learn that pride is a state of mind, is in the set of your jaw and shoulders and is the beauty with which you accept defeat. The problem with red is that you show too much of yourself, your insides are turned out for all the world to see, your blood visible, your heart all over your shirt but most especially in the crest thrumming over your ribcage. And Sergio and Fernando can't quite seem to meet in the middle, not like they used to when Fernando was a red-and-white and across town.

Just being back in Spain, in Madrid more specifically, makes Fernando feel heavy with regret, with the responsibility he has to the country. He feels stifled in the heat and he finds no comfort in the sun. He quite likes the cold and the rain, he likes to say with that smile of his, that smile that dares to be challenged, that smile that smacks of a boy that speaks the truth just when it doesn't really want to be heard at all, just when it hurts, just when his very words buzz around in one's head like a fly all day, taunting, torturing just because he can.

England is painfully reserved, like a good Catholic girl, and that gets Fernando off. He loves how they regard him still almost as a wild thing, as a feral boy snatched up out of the wild who they maybe have to train a little, tame down into proper English life. He's a homebody and Madrid is the antithesis of that, if home could be such a thing. Liverpool resonates with domesticity, with small-scale life, with neighbors and local grocery stores and quaintness. It was simple and uncomplicated and, after years of struggle, of scratching and clawing for every inch of freedom and space and respect, it was a welcome change for him. He felt the difference between Liverpool and Madrid his first night by the river Mersey and it became almost like a drug. He still wakes up some mornings with his body tense, ready for another battle only to realize that the war is over, that he's won, that he's enjoying the spoils and no one can take that away from him.

Sergio fell in love with Spain with the ancient eyes of an Andalucían. He fell in love with stifling, syrupy thick summers with pregnant vegetation and uncontrollable heat. He fell in love with the metallic scent of blood and the curve of the bodies of matadors and picadores, with the flutter of fingers over guitar strings and the way those fingers would smell of the nickel of the strings and the aged wood of the guitar. He fell in love with the wailing voices of cantadores, each waver and break like a fine pinprick in his swollen heart. Spain was the rush of the hooves of gypsy horses pulling vardos, Spain was pride, was history, was the soil in which his veins left his body through his feet to find, spidering out the soles of his feet and weaving down into the dark earth and attaching him irrevocably. It physically hurt Sergio to leave Spain for any real length of time. On long trips away, he always felt a pull of his blood, strangely across his wrists where the veins seemed to be the meatiest, an urgency to return home home home, _inicio_.

He resents Fernando a lot lately. He reads things from that petulant mouth in the papers and the words hurt him, they poke at his pride, they mock his deep-set heart. And why would he miss anything in Spain, Sergio muses. Madrid was killing him, afterall. (That one. That one had been the hardest to forget, those four words: _Madrid was killing me_. Sergio had had to delete at least three texts he'd started to Fernando, angry, accusing words like _oh, is that so?_ but he knew them to be wrong, his anger unfounded. His words went buried and unsent.) He wants to shove him down in a chair and shout angry things at him, to give him more concrete, good reasons to not want to come home. He wants to demand explanations though in reality, he knows them. He knows Fernando's story, perhaps better and more vividly than anyone else. He'd been there after the paralyzing losses, he'd been there when all the blame was put on his young shoulders, he'd been there to hold that beautiful, sobbing body and he'd cried with him out of sheer helplessness and he'd prayed in quiet sanctuaries for something, anything to give Fernando peace. But, somehow, when Fernando had told him he was leaving, he had been blindsided. Shocked. Absolutely heartbroken. He'd feigned understanding and tried so hard to give support and he still does two years later, he still smiles and congratulates and encourages, his mind swimming with Fernando's angry words all the while.

He gets the urge to shut him up, to silence him with his body, with his cock, to make him beg for mercy and redemption and obliteration. And sometimes he does. Sometimes he bends him over and makes his hand a weapon and leaves angry, gorgeous red marks all over that ever-paling body until Fernando is sobbing beneath him, broken and grateful for it. Sometimes he plunges his cock into Fernando's mouth and thrusts until there are tears pouring down those cheeks and he's choking with lack of air, his throat bruised and fucked open. Sometimes he stabs into Fernando's body until they're both shaking, until Sergio's body roars with pain from such impossible violence and they both come, aching and raw and without comfort. And when Fernando sleeps he always looks cherubic no matter what unspeakable thing they had just done, blonde hair a halo and cheeks and mouth just pink enough for oil paints and Sergio loathes himself then, he hates every fiber of his being that would dare to inflict such pain (his pain, his hidden, unending pain) on such a boy. He always wakes him up with sugar sweet kisses and with impossibly soft fingers in his sweaty hair and he takes him again only with tenderness to prove to Fernando that he was still capable of such a thing.

They don't speak about the present much anymore. Time-sweetened nostalgia hurts much less and lets them both sleep, lets Fernando depart for England with a clear conscious and lets Sergio remain in Spain, carefully keeping it a home until that far-off day when Fernando realizes that it's where home really is.


End file.
